


Ugly Lies, Beautiful Truths

by ishouldwritethatdown



Series: Family Ties [2]
Category: Dark Wolverine (Comics), Wolverine (Comics)
Genre: Daken being a mess, Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Gen, Laura being a mess but slightly better, Little Big Sister, Self-Harm via Self-Destructive Tendency, Sibling Bonding, Siblings (Lightly Roasted), emotions are hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 15:09:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17368223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishouldwritethatdown/pseuds/ishouldwritethatdown
Summary: Daken doesn't accept help from anybody. He doesn't need his kid sister to come over. He definitely doesn'twanther to come over. He got into this mess with his own stupidity and stubbornness, and that's how he'll get out of it.(Post-ANW #24)





	Ugly Lies, Beautiful Truths

Daken batted vaguely at the noise with a groan. _Beeping… thing… shut up!_

Like an alarm. What time was it? Trill. Trill. Boring into his brain. Where was that stupid phone?

He pried his eyes open and squinted, grabbing his phone from where it was vibrating itself closer to the edge of the table. He held it up to his face. Green and red. Circle. Trilling noise.

His phone was ringing. That never happened. Who the fuck was calling him? He brought the display name into focus with much more effort than he was really willing to give this early in the morning.

‘Laura’

Oh. Laura. Shit. What day was it? Was he supposed to check in with her? Did he promise her and Gabby something? His brain was still disconnected from his calendar. How long had be been asleep? Syncing… syncing…

He answered the phone. “Heyup,” he said. He tried to make it sound like he was awake, but the word had so little energy that he might as well still be dozing. He attempted to keep his eyes a little bit open, got off his stomach so it would be harder for him to fall back asleep. Easier to figure out what Laura was going to yell at him about so he could undercut and save her the trouble.

“Where are you?” she asked curtly.

He considered lying, on impulse. But he didn’t; she’d know. “I’m, uh. In my apartment,” he said. He looked around a bit to verify that this was, in fact, true. His slightly bloody sofa he was sprawled on. His pristine white walls spaced far, far apart. His weird postmodern art he didn’t choose. His takeout boxes of various types and ages littered around the place. Should probably clean those up before the rats moved in.

“Heard you got in a fight,” Laura said.

“Uhh. How?” he asked. He examined the blood on the sofa. You could only see it if you were looking for it, since it dried shiny black against shiny black leather. He ran his fingers over the new spots, raised ever so slightly. At some point, he should probably scrub the damn thing clean.

“You weren’t very subtle. People talk,” she replied ambiguously.

“Oh, so you’re calling to lecture me on keeping a low profile or whatever,” he waved his arm as he took himself to his feet. He was a little unsteady, and it didn’t help that the soles of his feet were slicking against the smooth wooden floor.

“No, Daken,” Laura sounded exasperated. “Although, you know, it wouldn’t hurt.”

“Uh huh,” he said, rolling his eyes. He flipped open the pizza box from the previous night. Empty. Damnit. 

He wandered into the kitchen, and pushed shut the empty cutlery drawer on his way to the fridge. He opened it and surveyed the contents. Moldy bread. Butter. Soda. Mustard, for some reason. Why the fuck did he have mustard?

“Okay, what then?” he asked.

“There was a lot of blood at the scene, alright. More than the five guys you gutted lost. A lot more,” she said.

“You remember I have a healing factor, right?” he said, shaking one of the beer cans on the counter. There was a little bit left in it. He weighed the pros and cons of knocking it down his throat, like it being lukewarm and flat but also being beer. “And if it’s my poor tattoo you’re calling for, it’s fine. Completely unscathed as far as I can tell.”

“Not what I’m worried about,” she replied. “They were just… random guys, Daken. They weren’t part of any agenda or plan or… they were just random thugs. Right?”

“Okay, okay,” he groaned. He opened the cupboard. Dry pasta, barbecue sauce, hot chocolate… Instant noodles. Maybe those would do. “I get it, I shouldn’t be killing guys in alleyways, we should all be perfect pacifists like the Wolverine. I get it!”

“No,” she said sternly. “That’s not what I’m saying. Not killing is my choice, I’m not trying to make yours for you. I’m not talking about you hurting other people, Daken. I’m… I’m talking about you finding other people to hurt you.”

He stopped his search, and his brain stopped with it. The clock on the opposite wall ticked out of time, its battery having been dying for a good few months without ever giving up completely. Stubborn thing was practically a Wolverine. He looked at the window, and the light filtering through it; late afternoon light. Golden, slanting.

He felt alone in the penthouse for a moment. Just him, in amongst all the garbage and blood and fancy furniture that he didn’t appreciate. It took him a few blinks of the eyes and shuffles of the nose before he remembered that Laura was waiting for his reply.

“Eh,” he said finally. “A good beating every now and then keeps me healthy.” He reached to close the cupboard, and then walked back in the living room’s direction. Getting his body moving again, trying to use it to kickstart his brain like an old car.

She didn’t say anything while he did this. The golden sun soaked into the apartment through the floor-to-ceiling windows in the main room. It was setting, already. He’d been asleep for more than twelve hours. What a waste of a day.

“No, Daken,” she said softly. “It doesn’t.” She wasn’t condescending, wasn’t pitying. She was empathetic. _Empathetic._

“Aww, you care about me or something?” he cracked a grin. _Gotcha,_ he thought.

“Yeah,” she replied instantly.

That word punched him in the gut. She said it with such ease, such confidence. Yeah. Like if he’d asked any other question in the world. Do you want to get Taco Bell? Yeah. Did you see that thing in the news? Yeah. Did you get a haircut? Yeah.

_Do you care about me? Yeah._

He was struck dumb. Didn’t have a witty comment left in his arsenal to throw her way. They could have bantered back and forth all day if she’d said literally anything else. Why didn’t she say literally anything else?

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone,” she teased. He knew she was making fun of him. And also that she meant it regardless.

“Thanks,” he responded. He didn’t know what to say. What to feel.

_What the fuck. What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck._

“Are you decent?” she asked. “I’m coming upstairs.”

“You-- you’re here? In the building?” he looked at the door as if she were about to walk through it that instant.

“Yeah. Hide those blueprints for your next plan to seize control of a small nation, or whatever.”

“You’re hilarious,” he said, deadpan, and hung up the phone.

He looked around at the mess, and wondered if he would be able to scoop everything into the trashcan before she knocked on the door. Probably not. He felt a little lost, standing in the middle of the apartment in his underwear. There was a lot of empty space up here. He felt like he hadn’t really noticed that before.

He strode over to the sofa and held up his jeans. They were ripped and bloody, but he didn’t have time to hunt around for another pair, so he pushed his legs through them. All the while there was a ringing in his head, the tone and inflection of that _Yeah_ on repeat.

There was a knock at the door, and then it was opening. Laura looked much more put-together than he did, not least because she was actually wearing whole outfit, and her hair was brushed.

He ran a hand through his own mop, a little stuck together with a healthy mix of dried blood, grease, and product. But it wasn’t his appearance that made her cringe; her hand went to her nose and her face scrunched up.

“You reek,” she informed him. He was about to gesture to the culturing takeout scattered around, but she cut him off before he even started. “No. It’s you. Go take a shower. And put on some clothes that aren’t bloodstained and three weeks old.”

He scowled and strode into the bathroom, flicking the lock shut. He threw his clothes into the nicely-gathering heap in the corner and twisted the knob on the shower. Daken stepped under the water, and it was scalding. It pelted him like hailstones, and he let it rub his skin red, let it slide over the grease in his hair and come cascading past his face.

He wished his skin would boil. Wished he could watch it simmer and then settle, watch his healing factor iron all the creases out. He stayed like that for a while, slow-roasting his brain so that it didn’t have time to put a thought together.

No one had ever said they cared about him without a “but” following it before. Without a clause, caring was weakness. Without that threat to hold over someone, the “if this continues I’ll stop caring”, that _Yeah_ was just a vulnerability. It was an exposed nerve that he could strike easily. Hell, she practically deserved it for being so reckless with her feelings.

For… trusting him.

What kind of dumbass did that? Trusted him, Daken, who was about as unpredictable as a dice throw. Who never looked out for anybody except himself, and sometimes not even that. What possible reason could she have for telling him that, except…

Except if it was true.

He focused on working his hands through his hair. First to strip out the grease and product, and then pushing the last dregs of his shampoo through it. He covered his hands in foam, ignored the sting in his eye when he got careless. Kept working. Kept thinking about the fine motor movements of his fingers.

At some point, the water turned cold. He stepped out of the shower and watched his hair drip, and then he raked a towel once around his body. The mirror was steamed up, and he watched the vague shape of his reflection in it. This blurred figure looked how he felt, in that moment.

He started digging around in his clothes pile for something Laura wouldn’t turn her snooty little nose up at.

 _Unfair_ , a little voice somewhere in his mind criticised. It was pounced on by the rest, the ones he fought back when he wasn’t in a bad mood, and the little voice fell silent.

He reached for the door handle and froze. There was a shadow in the gap under the door where the light usually insisted on pushing through. He almost didn’t notice it, but he caught a whiff of her at the same time as his eyes fell on it.

He snapped the lock and yanked the door open before she had time to hear it and move. Laura got unbalanced, but she didn’t topple completely backwards. She pushed herself out of the doorway, still sitting, and looked up at him. He could tell from her stare that she didn’t intend to explain.

“I don’t need you to babysit me,” Daken hissed, and stalked across the apartment. The tension in his shoulders built with every step he took towards the kitchen. Remembering as he got there that he didn’t have any food, he just braced his hands against the counter and glared out the window. Sky was dimming, now, with the sun mostly behind the horizon.

Her footsteps were quiet, a remnant of her years spent training as an undetectable assassin. He’d never managed to get the hang of lightfootedness like that. He used to say he liked to make an entrance.

“Will you quit staring at me,” he said. He turned to glare at her, leaning in the doorframe with her arms crossed, but she wasn’t there.

His heart skipped. In the second that followed, he felt sick to his stomach, disgusted that he’d managed to drive her away - and then he heard her moving around in the other room. His cheeks flushed, and his brow creased until it felt like his forehead was being stuck with pins.

She didn’t answer him, although with ears like hers he knew she’d heard what he said. He could hear that she was moving back and forth, and when he stepped into the doorframe to see what she was up to, anger rose in his throat again.

“I told you to stop cleaning up after me,” he said.

She folded another takeout box inside the biggest one and put another empty beer can next to the collection that was gathering on the table. “This is for my own self preservation,” she replied.

 _Wouldn’t be a problem if you left me alone_ , he thought, but he couldn’t even bring himself to say it. Not when the sick feeling in his gut from her faux-abandonment still lingered the way it did.

“We’re going grocery shopping once this is done,” she announced.

His heart clenched, and the hair on his arms stood on end. There was a surge of anger through him, gaining traction. “I’m not a baby!” he yelled. “I don’t need you to- to-- wipe my chin with my bib and sing me beddie-byes and hold my hand while I cross the road.”

He wanted her to get mad at him, to tell him he was _being_ a baby, and that he was lucky she hadn’t abandoned him the second they first met. He wanted her to tell him that he was useless, a waste of space, that she would be grateful never to see him again.

“I need to go to the store anyway,” she said. “I promised Gabby I’d get another apple pie.”

He was stuck again with what she’d said. That _Yeah_ , with no hint of sarcasm at all. He’d told a lot of people he’d cared about them in the past. Over time he’d figured out how to construct a good lie, what you had to make your voice do so that it sounded sincere. He’d fooled a lot of people, but never himself.

Just then he thought that if she asked him whether he cared about her, he could answer that question honestly for the first time in his life.

“Fine,” Daken said.

He picked up the takeout box she’d stuffed with other takeout boxes and tossed it into the trash like a basketball. Takeout residue probably splattered the walls some, but he didn’t have enough fucks left to waste one on that.

He walked into the bedroom, dimmed by curtains that had been closed for days on end, and opened the drawer by the bed. He dug around until he found a couple of pins he could stick in his hair, and then grabbed his cargo jacket from where it was draped clumsily over the chair he never sat in.

“It looks good like that,” Laura commented, nodding at his hair after he had pinned it into place.

“Whatever,” he said, “Let’s go get the little squirt her pie.”

Laura held her hand out towards him. She had her eyebrows raised, and the hint of a smile on her lips.

“What did I just say?” he scowled. “I’m not a little kid. I don’t need to hold your hand.”

“I know,” Laura shrugged. She dropped it and headed out into the hallway. Maybe it had been a joke. Maybe… he needed to stop being such a buzzkill.

“You should probably lock your door more often, by the way,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, and patted his pockets for his keys. They were still in his cargo jacket from… how many days ago was that?

He twisted the key in the lock and bit his lip, facing the closed door. He dropped his keys into his pocket and looked at Laura, his sort-of little sister, who was willing to hold his hand and help him clean up his own mess and take him to the store.

He really didn’t know why she thought he deserved her. But he was glad she did. “Hey,” he said, with an unsure wobble in his voice. “I… I care about you too, you know.”

She smiled at him, and then turned and made for the stairs. “Your secret’s safe with me, little bro.”


End file.
